A Post Falls company that makes foam insulation and packaging materials has managed to expand during the recession, largely by capitalizing on growing Canadian markets and diversifying its U.S. product line.

The company, FMI-EPS LLC, makes foam products from expanded polystyrene (EPS) and operates a plant with separate manufacturing lines in a combined 76,000 square feet of floor space in two buildings at 9465 N. McGuire.

Gary Bremer, owner of the company, declines to disclose the company's annual revenues, but says business in 2011 was up 18 percent compared with 2010.

"We're doing well from what other people are saying," he says, adding, "Canada is booming."

The company employs 29 people at its Post Falls plant and headquarters, up from 17 prior to its last major expansion in 2008, when it erected a 31,000-square-foot building and installed a large block-molding machine.

Bremer, who has owned the plant since 1998, also owns an EPS plant in Jerome, Idaho, which he co-founded with his father in 1993. He's also part-owner of a plant in Canada.

One side of the Post Falls plant makes massive polystyrene blocks that measure 16 feet by 4 feet by 3 feet. The blocks are then cut into insulating sheets, smaller blocks, and custom shapes.

The other side of the plant uses EPS mostly to produce insulating concrete forms and seafood shipping containers in individual molds, rather than from large blocks of the material. Insulating concrete forms are hollow interlocking blocks in which concrete can be poured for use in building foundations.

The raw material that turns into foam comes in grains about the size of sugar crystals. Machines mix the grains with steam to expand them into BB-sized beads and immediately press them into molds.

The block-molding machine can form blocks from all new grains or a mixture that includes up to 30 percent scrap foam trimmed from other blocks during the manufacturing process, says Rudy Woodworth, who operates it.

"The scrap we can't get rid of is pressed into densified logs," Woodworth says, adding that another company uses the logs to make plastics.

He says he can set the mixer on the block-molding machine to formulate several densities ranging most commonly from one to two pounds of material per cubic foot, and the company is experimenting with making denser, harder blocks.

The block-molding machine can make a foam block every six minutes. The big blocks are stacked and stored in the warehouse area in the center of the plant so they can cure, often for a week to a month, depending on how precise the dimensions of the final product have to be. During the curing process, blocks tend to shrink slightly as moisture from the steam used to expand the foam escapes. If they're cut too soon, the products could shrink below customers' specifications, Woodworth says.

Most of the 16-foot blocks eventually are cut in half and then sliced into 4 by 8 foot slabs and sheets that range from a half-inch to several inches thick.

Cutting machines use thin strands of copper wire heated with an electric current to slice panels from blocks. The company also has a laminating machine that adheres plastic film to panels, connecting them in fanfold sections that can be 50 feet long.

FMI-EPS also cuts custom shapes using a computer-programmed machine that controls the cutting wires. Such custom shapes range from architectural columns to ornamental objects.

For the other half of the plant, the company's biggest market for the insulating concrete forms is in Canada, although the product is gaining popularity around the U.S. because of its energy-conserving, insulating qualities, says Tony Bremer, product designer and son of the owner.

FMI-EPS operates four presses now, which manufacture individually molded products, and the company plans to install a new press this year, Bremer says. The company then plans to convert one of the older presses to handle 100 percent recycled material.

"We hope to open a large market, especially in government areas that require a lot of (recycled) building materials," he says.

If there's enough demand for recycled EPS products, the company hopes to begin accepting post-consumer EPS for recycling, he says.